Marigolds for Eileen
by RemaSofiRuin
Summary: *Written for HogwartsOnlineII May Flowers challenge* Tells the story Eileen Prince and her marriage to Tobias Snape through her relationship with Marigolds.


**AN: This is the updated and edited version thanks to Inkfire who Beta'd it for me. I wrote this story for the HogwartsOnlineII May Flowers challenge. Marigolds represent pain and grief. EDIT: 7/13/13**

Title: Marigolds for Eileen

Character: Eileen Prince Snape

House: Slytherin

Name: RemaSofiRuin/Sofi

In the back room of a decrepit church house on Spinner's End, a severe, sallow face stared back at itself in a silver handheld mirror. The woman to whom the face belonged wore a beige dress that had once resembled fine white lace, but was now discolored from age and repeated washings, alongside grime-encrusted work clothes. Her hair was pulled back in a single braid that did nothing to soften the unflattering features of her face: her eyes sunken and the irises a flat black, a Roman nose that split her long face and hovered over grim pale lips. Eileen Prince was getting married in a matter of hours, not to the wealthy pure-blooded patrician her parents had hoped for and not in the lavish production they had expected. To say her choice of husband, the simple, plebeian, working-class Muggle, had surprised them would be stretching the truth to an unprecedented extreme. The reality of the situation was this, Eileen was already all but disinherited from her family and upon her marriage to Tobias Snape she and her descendants would be cut off from them forever. It was only in these last hours, sitting on her own in silence as she prepared to sever herself from the world she had always taken for granted, that Eileen's last hope was shattered.

Eileen's mourning over her departure from childhood was immediately stalled by the glass panes in the single window behind her being thrust open by the imperious form of a white barred owl. The shock of this interruption caused Eileen to jump to her feet, dropping the mirror to the old wooden floor where its face shattered in the silence. The black eyes of the impatient bird focused intently on those of the girl before it released the burden it had been carrying on the cluttered table before it and departed as swiftly as it had come. Eileen stared dumbly after the bird she knew to be her father's, daring herself to find the courage to face her family for the last time. Resigned to her fate, Eileen turned and approached the table under the window and its contents.

The first of the two objects to attract her notice was a small bundle of yellow-gold flowers, streaked and rimmed with orange, tied with a silken black ribbon in a posy fit for a funeral.

"Marigolds?" Eileen wondered aloud as she picked up the modest bouquet. She knew they had many uses in archaic potions, to aid in prophetic dreams and dissuade gossip primarily, but her parents had never supported her love of the subject so there was no explanation to be had there. She then looked back to see a letter waiting on the table as well, the ridged envelope embossed with her full name across it in deep red ink like an open wound. The trembling that had started in her hands with the appearance of the owl had now spread to her whole body and she sank in a waiting chair to prevent herself from collapsing instead on the floor in her shock. Numbly, Eileen turned the letter over, slid her penknife under the seal, and opened it, removing the paper inside more from habit than conscious thought. Seeing the harsh slant of her father's hand, she prepared herself for the worst and began to read.

_**I, Hadrian Aelius Prince, do henceforth disown and disinherit Eileen Octavia, formerly of the Prince line, as a result of her unconscionable marriage to a Muggle, one Tobias Russell Snape. She will receive no further contact from the Prince family or notice from them or their associates neither in any public nor private setting. She will have no access to the Prince vault nor gain any aid, monetary or otherwise, from the Prince family ever again. From this day forward, she is to be forgotten and all evidence of her prior existence is to be destroyed or, if that is impossible, actively removed from all notice. This I, Hadrian Aelius Prince, do vow upon my wand and swear as a wizard to uphold and enforce in sickness and in health, as long as breath still flows in my lungs and blood pumps in my veins.**_

The tears that had so sedately dripped from her eyes before now ran in rivulets down Eileen's long face, causing those last hateful words of her father's to blot and run into each other on the stiff parchment. Through her tears, Eileen saw another message written in a softer, rounder hand below the first. Her mother's words, though more beautiful in form, were no less harsh in content and, if anything, were more damaging for their oozing spite.

_Eileen, my only child, you have saddened and disappointed me greatly. You would foolishly throw away the years of grueling work and endless hours of lessons to make you into a proper wife on a worthless Muggle. You have caused me endless grief, from your horrid birth that left me scarred and barren to your vacant expressions that have taunted me with the tortuous knowledge that you would never have the capacity to live up to my expectations, much less those of polite society. Your anti-social and freakish behavior has left all whom you encounter in a state of depression and apathy, I worst of all for my extended exposure, though it came not by choice. May you reap your poison upon the Muggles now and let the wizarding world be rid of your curse at last._

_(I thought the Marigolds fitting for such a creature as you to bear on your wedding day. May their color enhance the sallow pallor of your face and give the innocents notice to flee.)_

Eileen looked with despair down at the flowers that mockingly shone up from her lap, dripping with her fallen tears like morning dew. They were not for potions or for their beauty. Eileen sat as the hot tears stung at her eyes and sluggishly dripped down her nose and onto her clenched hands. She lifted the posy of flowers to eye level as she recalled one of many lessons her mother had taught her as a girl, the language of flowers. Marigolds, for all their beauty, represented pain and grief, the sorrow that her mother wished upon her in revenge for all that she had brought upon her family.

Swallowing the last of her silent sobs, Eileen raised her head, squared her shoulders, and closed her eyes, willing her tears to dry up with her overflowing emotions. There would be no father to walk her down the aisle, no mother with her crying over "Her baby girl, all grown up!" and no final goodbye to resolve the stinging pain of their cold rejection. She would carry this last wish of her mother's as a memento of the rejection she had suffered. She would walk down the aisle even if there were no bridesmaids nor a flower girl to lead the way. All that mattered was her love for Tobias and his equal love in return. As the clock struck 4, Eileen rose from her seat and, as if walking to the beat of a silent dirge she carried deep in her heart, moved purposefully through the doors of the empty church and towards her husband-to-be, all the while the yellow and orange flowers in her hand shining like gold.

* * *

The frowning woman pulled a wide-brimmed hat off her head to survey the newly tended flowers in the golden light of the setting sun. Marigolds swayed on either side of the crooked fence, framing the path that led to a weathered and beaten-down house. Heaving a sigh of exhaustion, Eileen trudged up the slanted steps and pushed her way through a cracked screen door. The pained creaks of the wooden floor under her feet were met in response by the percussive patter of her son running down the stairs to meet her.

"Mum!" Severus cried in delight, "Is it time for dinner yet?" Eileen gave a mild smile and a pat on the head to the 5-year-old boy clinging to her skirt.

"Yes, dear. Why don't you snap the beans while I put the pasta on to boil?" Crouching down to take his small hands in hers, she looked him very seriously in the eye, imparting the magnitude of this new responsibility with her even stare. Severus nodded exuberantly in response and the pair moved into the kitchen. This was one of the few times mother and son had together uninterrupted before Tobias returned home from the pub, drunk as a skunk and expecting a hot and waiting meal in front of him. This was also one of the few remaining tasks that Eileen used to show her son the world of magic.

Severus watched in anticipation as his mother withdrew a slender stick of wood, her wand, from the inner pocket of her long skirt. As his mother summoned the necessary tools and ingredients for preparing the meal, the boy pulled one of the dining room chairs up to the counter to use as a stool in order to reach the food above his head. The two Snapes shared a quick conspiratorial grin as Eileen lit the gas stove with an _"Incendio!" _and filled the waiting pot with _"Aguamenti"._

"Go on," the woman gestured to the waiting pile of beans as her son stared up at her in fascination, "Those won't take care of themselves!" Over the years of living in the Muggle world, Eileen had recognized she was using magic less and less, partly because of the fear of being seen but also at the discouragement of her own husband. The only reason she continued now was to teach her son that there was more to his heritage than poverty and violence. These thoughts were immediately pushed away as Eileen busied herself with setting the small table and straightening the counters. After the pasta reached a boil she used magic to set a spoon to stir it slowly.

Moments after doing this, the screen on the front door closed with a slam and her husband's thunderous steps could be heard approaching. Both occupants of the tight kitchen froze in shock and abject fear as the walls seemed to shrink inwards upon them. The towering form of Tobias Snape filled the doorway as he too came to a stop.

"What is this?" he demanded, clearly shaking with the exertion of keeping himself upright, "I told you never to do that hocus-pocus under my roof, you slippery good-for-nothing witch! How dare you teach my son to your awful ways!" By the end of this exclamation the enraged man had taken two more aggressive steps into the room and was pointing his finger in accusation. The spoon in the pot fell with a loud clatter to the floor and boiling water splashed onto both the counter and the stove, splattering Severus in the process. The boy whimpered in pain and fear as his father turned his attentions from his wife to his son. In a second, the eyes that were previously flaming with anger turned as hard and sharp as obsidian and Tobias snarled in disgust. Eileen quickly grabbed onto her husband as he went to lunge at the cowering boy.

"Run!" she yelled in a broken voice filled with the desperation that only a mother can possess. She was promptly thrown backwards into the table behind her as Tobias lashed out in his fury. The terrified boy took advantage of his father's distraction and scrambled past to run out the front door. The screen slammed again like a crack of thunder as he tripped, tumbling down the steps as he went, and took off in an adrenaline-induced panic, never once looking back to see the last rays of sunlight illuminating the golden flowers his mother so loved.

**AN: So, first story completed. Yay! Please review and be kind.**


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